Chapters:

Her hands were calloused and rough from scraping through the
streets. Her voice was no better.

But one would be hard pressed to find someone in the city depths
not scarred and creeping in the shadows.

The one feature that set her apart from the scrambling masses was
not her beauty or her intelligence- she was as ugly as she was
illiterate- it was her approach.

She came to the carriage with sad eyes, bruised and leaking,
looking for pity. Looking for anything at all. What a
pathetic whore, said the father, nestled away in his velvet
seat, embroidered with veins of black fabric and buttons of gold.

The father was always candid with his son- or at least his own
perception of candid honesty. His boy was old enough to take on
the nastier truths of the world. Twelve. Far older than the
father himself had been when he had been brought to the depths.

"What is a whore?" The son asked. He knew what a whore was, of
course, as many boys of twelve did, but he knew the girl did not
look like one. Not that she reeked of innocent youthfulness; but
whores were to be bought. And to be bought, the boy knew the
product being sold had to have worth. The girl did not look
worthy of anything.

The father did not answer his son. He knew the boy's little word
games well, and was not interested in such childish indulgences.

This will all be yours one day, said the father. He
looked down at his son, the same way he looked out the carriage
and into the depths. The father continued to speak, but the boy
did not listen.

All the boy did was wrinkle his nose and sit quietly, pondering
his father's first statement. The idea of owning such a smelly,
filthy place was not one he had entertained before. Even from
within the carriage that had been saturated in lilac and
raspberry perfumes, the stench of sour piss on mildew encrusted
concrete still made its way inside. The stories of the perpetual
darkness in the depths gave the boy nightmares even before he'd
even seen it for himself. Not that he'd tell his father that.

By now the sad-eyed girl from before was long gone; carried away
from the golden carriage by the darkness that silhouetted her
previous pitiful stance.

The boy didn't even notice he was gazing out the tinted window,
looking for the girl, until his father planted a firm, thick
fingered hand onto the boy's bony shoulder.

She'll be dead within the month, said the father,
casting only a sideways glance at his son.

"How do you know?" The boy asked. But once again, he already knew
the answer. Or answers. She'd die of some filthy
disease, or at the hands of rapists and thugs, or of by the hand
of one of his father's patrolling Legionnaires'. The latter was
the most likely.